A group of WordPerfect for the Macintosh users are campaigning tp rescue WordPerfect, flooding Corel Corporation with e-mails and phone calls to let the company know they mean business.

Ottawa-based Corel, which purchased WordPerfect from Novell in 1996, announced plans last month to cease development of WordPerfect for Macintosh, formalizing what has been the de facto case since 1997.

WordPerfect fans established a website May 13, at http://www.geocities.com/bulgybear/wp.html, announcing the formation of the Campaign to Save WordPerfect for Mac. The campaign was established to put pressure on Corel by demonstrating the amount of brand loyalty among users of the program.

"Corel has the sales figures, so they know the breadth of support for WordPerfect," Jonathan Mills, coordinator of the campaign, said. "What they may be underestimating is the depth of that support. People who have used WordPerfect have tremendous respect for it. They're not going to give it up without a fight."

Mills noted that the success of the iMac and other Macintosh computers has revitalized the Mac software market over the past two years. "Mac users have been hugely supportive of WordPerfect over the years," Mills said. "Now Corel comes along and says, 'Thanks, guys, but get lost.'"

"This decision may or may not be penny-wise, but it's definitely pound-foolish," says the support Wbsite, "But if enough public outcry happens, maybe the good folks at Corel will change their minds. Please contact Corel and demand that their decision be reversed. If they listen, Mac users will praise them to the skies--and buy lots of their software! If they stick to their guns, they will be remembered for making one of the stupidest corporate decisions in history....

"WP for Windows is a terrific word processor! It has better features than MS Word, and it's more powerful. Most impressive is its user-friendliness. WP is incredibly intuitive, even for first-time users; it's more customizable than Word, and more easily customizable; and its menus and dialogue boxes are a lot less confusing. It is the definition of what a word processing app should be."

Mills observes that "Microsoft is under attack for cornering the market. Now one of their biggest adversaries says it'll only make its number-one program to run on Windows, which is a Microsoft platform. It doesn't make sense,"

If you would like to see for yourself how good WordPerfect for the Mac is, you can still download a free copy from Corel's Website.

The downloadable version of WordPerfect 3.5 is a complete product that incorporates all updates and patches issued by Corel subsequent to the original product release.

The program's features include customizable tool bars and keyboard shortcuts; a built-in graphics editor; tables; style sheets; a macro language; full Macintosh drag and drop support; an equation editor; envelope printing; bookmarks and hyperlinks within a document or other documents; AppleScript support; WorldScript (foreign language) support; text-to-speech, an HTML editor, a grammar checker, automated tables of contents, on-the-fly spelling correction and watermarks. A "Make It Fit command" automatically reformats documents that are just a little too long to fit on the desired number of pages.

WordPerfect's clean, easy-to-use toolbars use plain-English labels instead of Word's cryptic icons, and a master tool bar allows you to select with a click which other toolbars you want to display. WordPerfect can also import Word documents with stylesheets intact.

You can download a free copy of WordPerfect 3.5e here:
http://www.corel.com/products/macintosh/wpmac35/index.htm

For more information on the "Save Wordperfect" campaign, contact: Jonathan Mills at savewordperfect@mailcity.com

Charles W. Moore

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February 09, 2010